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Apple's New Proprietary Software Locks Kill Independent Repair On New MacBook Pros (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Apple has introduced software locks that will effectively prevent independent and third-party repair on 2018 MacBook Pro computers, according to internal Apple documents obtained by Motherboard. The new system will render the computer "inoperative" unless a proprietary Apple "system configuration" software is run after parts of the system are replaced. According to the document, which was distributed to Apple's Authorized Service Providers late last month, this policy will apply to all Apple computers with the "T2" security chip, which is present in 2018 MacBook Pros as well as the iMac Pro. The software lock will kick in for any repair which involves replacing a MacBook Pro's display assembly, logic board, top case (the keyboard, touchpad, and internal housing), and Touch ID board. On iMac Pros, it will kick in if the Logic Board or flash storage are replaced. The computer will only begin functioning again after Apple or a member of one of Apple's Authorized Service Provider repair program runs diagnostic software called Apple Service Toolkit 2.
Why should anybody be surprised? It's Apple.
Vote with your dollars. Android is better anyway and you get a whole lot more for your money.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Right to repair laws can't come soon enough.
did no one read about the chinese compromise of the supremicro motherboards? and now people are upset that a vendor requires certified parts?
Please... I'd pay extra for that gladly.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Most commodity computers can have parts replaced even when the manufacturer no longer supports them officially. The new Macbook Pro? Apple can just say that "our cloud software no longer supports computers over a certain age." Voila! Your laptop becomes a brick if it needs any sort of minor repair (keyboard or LCD are minor for any well-designed laptop).
Bonus points if your laptop breaks in a developing country where the nearest "authorized" repair place is 1000 miles away. Piss on Steve Jobs' grave for pioneering the model of computing as a prison. Screw Tim Cook for perpetuating it and making it worse.
Public/private key encryption should allow ANY part signed by the manufacturer to work in the laptop without affecting security. Frankly, if this were about security, Apple would warn users of computers with unauthorized parts (at boot) without disabling them entirely. Since they're bricking systems, this is about grubbing money, not security.
I guess since Apple is selling less computers these days*, they have to squeeze more money out of their customers.
*https://www.macrumors.com/2018/08/01/fewest-quarterly-mac-sales-since-2010/
Right to repair will force apple to give this software out to 3rd party shops.
Not good enough unless it's made available to all OWNERS. If you bought it, you should be allowed to fix it.
This has to be the most lowlife, underhanded, ill-thought scheme I've seen from them yet. The eighthwit (they don't have enough wits to be a halfwit) who thought of this needs to be fired and replaced with someone who has a sense of decency.
The drafters of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act wouldn't like this at all. They did not, however, make illegal. The Act, in 15 USC 2302 (C), says that the WARRANTY may not be conditioned on using Apple-branded parts. They can't (and don't) void the warranty if you use unauthorized parts. Here's the text of the statute:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/us...
The people who wrote that might wish that they had written "also, you can't arrange for the product to stop working when unauthorized parts are installed", but they didn't write that. Maybe a lawmaker should write that now.
It's possibly unlawful under other laws. There are quite a few different unfair competition laws and some may apply.
Several years ago I had a thinkpad that had become infested with ants. I used a blow dryer to heat up the computer a little (while it was off) to make the ants want to leave. I left the blow dryer over the keyboard too long and melted the keys off.
Bought a keyboard online for 30 dollars and replaced the old one in five minutes. This wouldn't have been possible with this new MacBook. Sad.
"What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson
Seriously are you not the owner of your own equipment anymore?
I can understand them having a bios level warning that can be disabled for this kind of thing. Similar to how you can put a machine into secure boot mode or disable it if you want.
But outright blocking the machine from operating with no "I understand the risk click OK to continue" type of thing is complete anti consumer BS.
What is the point of this? Do they really think it's a long term benefit to their customers?
The machines are already not the most appealing to start with, but this is such a new low disqualifying them entirely for me. Sad. One could already not even swap the SSD anymore at the last gen machines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... Don't support, don't buy!
Fucking hell. This has gone from "Apples stuff is hard to repair because of wonky design decsions" to straight up malevolence.
I've been using Macs since Vista completely murdered my will to use windows ever again. New laptop, constant blue screens of death on "Certified for Vista" laptop. After being told I had to pay $100+ to upgrade back to XP I threw the towel in and got me big desktop imac and then later a mac laptop. It had unixy underbelly so my BSD background fit right in, it just seemed to work really well, and once I got over the slight behavioral differences (command-C vs Ctrl-C, menu on top etc) it was a system I really enjoyed working with. Ended up with an iPhone too to cash in on the new iPhone dev stuff (I was formerly a Symbian dev, hell on earth). I was the model of an Apple Fanboy. Shit Apple where so good to me that when a fucked up contract that was about to land me in court was caused by app store delays I actully emailed Steve Jobs, and he *fucking emailed me back* and put his personal assistant in charge of getting my shit through the store. Thats how great apple used to be.
But man, modern Apple sucks. My last apple purchase was a 2017 macbook pro to finally replace the trust 2011 MBP, the keyboard *sucked*, it only had those whack thunderbolt-3/USB-C ports which I had precisely zero perhipherals for and all the adaptors where ridiculously expensive and kinda unrelaible, and when I accidently dropped it and cracked the screen apple quoted me well over $1K to repair it.
So I ended up taking it to a third party indian repair dude who fixed it for $400. Not a great job, but at least I could afford it.
Also someone then broke into my house and stole the laptop. Admitedly I can't pin that one on Apple (I think?!).
Heres the thing. Without that cheapo unauthorized repair, I'd have been stuffed. With a nearly brand new laptop, unable to be used.
Apple want to take THAT away too?
Maybe its time I just swallowed my pride and built myself a Linux/Windows dual-booter.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Take a look at the link, it is laid out in about 98% the same as photo shop, most of the same keyboard commands, AND since the engine has been built from scratch it is often faster than PS.
It is available for OS X and Windows.
IN fact their other tools rival Adobe's AI and soon InDesign....with Designer and Publisher.
Also just going on this train of thought, I've pretty much ditched Lightroom for On1 RAW, and the 2019 version coming soon will have a RAW workflow with layers....still in RAW, that and the luminosity masks give some great functionality.
All these very good options available, without having to pay rent to Adobe monthly....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Android is better, for many reasons. Obviously, 80%+ of the smartphone users in the world prefer it.
That is overwhelmingly because of price and nothing else in most cases. Few prefer it for any technical reason. Apple doesn't sell to the low end of the market so that has been filled in mostly with Android devices in large unit volumes. Apple has close to 50% market share in premium smartphones with Samsung accounting for the lions share of the rest of the segment.
Personally, I like the Android Linux kernel, it's just way better than Apple's Mach kernel.
Unless you are a developer you have approximately zero direct interaction with the kernel so this is just fanboyism. Nobody actually buying smartphones or tablets is comparing iOS to Android is comparing kernel architectures or making vague "efficiency" comparisons. Not even the hardest core geeks. The only reason to make your argument is ideology.
If you like Android better that's fine. There are some excellent Android devices out there and they work great. If you want to argue it is superior to Apple's offering for a given purpose that's fine too but please make better arguments. There are a lot of good ones to chose from. No need to be a blind fanboy.
Yup Affinity stuff is legit. Being able to buy it is excellent to - $50 a month for Adobe adds up. I wrote a book using LaTeX with Affinity designer for the diagrams.
Their stuff comes across as being from a "Let's make a clean sheet version Adobe tools" angle and so it does the same stuff with less cruft and a nicer UI. I don't have to wait a week for it to open either.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.